Fight over freak-out feline a crime-report classic

Do you remember that popular TV show, Kids Say the Darndest Things, where Art Linkletter and, later, Bill Cosby asked kids grown-up questions? It was because kids quite frequently say silly things when trying to make sense out of what goes on in the adult world.

Then they grow up and become just as whacky as the rest of us.

Nowhere has this been more evident than in the Palm Beach Daily News Crime Scene Report, which often features accounts of Palm Beachers getting caught breaking rules and using nutty logic to convince a police officer it’s not their fault.

Such was the case in 1999 when Ms. Patricia Glass told an officer she didn’t deserve a parking ticket because he missed seeing her in her car.

Obviously, she must have thought that she didn’t deserve a parking ticket because the car was occupied. But it was her comment that the officer must not have seen her because she was surrounded by tan that caught my eye. With a name like Glass, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. You can write puns into a gag, but seldom does life hand you one all ready to go.

One problem doing cartoons based on the Crime Scene Report is that it’s not front-page news. I can’t be guaranteed that all readers are familiar with the story, so I basically need to include the whole scenario in the cartoon.

I recently had to pass on a story about a Palm Beach woman who picked up a stray cat because of this problem. She initially put up fliers in the neighborhood to find the owner, but when no one responded, she took the cat to the vet, paid to get it neutered and kept it.

Actually, the cat belonged to a deliveryman who took it on the job when his house was being fumigated. The cat freaked out riding in the van and jumped ship while on the island. Weeks later, the deliveryman saw the flier and called.

Unfortunately, because he was an “outsider,” she was immediately suspicious of his motives. He ended up having to ask the cops to intercede. The woman then lied to police, saying she’d sent the cat to France with her sister.

Photos were compared to the flier and, indeed, it was the same cat the deliveryman had nursed as a kitten when its mother had died — a cherished pet. By then the Palm Beach woman had admitted she still had the cat at home, but refused to return it to an outsider who’d “abandoned it.” I guess once a cat has become a Palm Beacher, there’s no going back.

You know how I love to cartoon about cats and xenophobes, but this story would have filled a comic book rather than a single panel cartoon. Still, it’s a Palm Beach classic.